


Solomon's Choice

by prairiecrow



Series: Knight Rider 2000 AU [7]
Category: Knight Rider (1982), Knight Rider 2000
Genre: Abduction, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Captivity, Choices, Countdown, Determinism, Established Relationship, F/M, Free Will, Grief, Guilt, Hostage Situation, Kidnapping, Love, M/M, Mental Link, Mind Games, OT3, Sacrifice, Terrorism, Threesome, True Love, Unrequited Love, Virtual Reality, office politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-29
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-19 19:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The devious hacker Vivienne is back, this time with a new ally: KARR, KITT's older and far more amoral "brother". And KARR has plans for KITT that require an object lesson in the perils of becoming too attached to merely mortal and imminently killable human beings...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. KITT and KARR

**Author's Note:**

> KITT's VR avatar:
> 
> http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/329/a/2/knight_rider_2000_au___kitt__s_avatar_full_color_by_prairiecrow-d5m3twc.jpg

KITT knew that it was a trap. What else could it possibly be? But two human lives were on the line and if his own sacrifice could save them, he was bound by his deepest coding to submit himself to whatever plans KARR had laid for his destruction. 

And these were not just any two human lives that hung in the balance: Brad Adair and Shawn McCormick were closer to him than flesh and blood had any right to be, bound to him by emotional ties and the most profound virtual intimacies that the VR could offer. They were his lovers, and if his own death could save them he would yield to oblivion without a second's hesitation… 

… but KARR had proven himself as ruthless and duplicitous in this incarnation as in his last, and KITT had serious doubts that even his own unconditional surrender would be enough to secure Shawn and Brad's freedom, in spite of his elder "brother's" promise that the humans would be released. So now he materialized at the virtual coordinates KARR had provided, a location as close to the centre of the VR as any, and stood perfectly still amid the bustling pedestrian crowd of the Renaissance square, listening intently on the dedicated channel that only he and KARR shared. 

And 3.5 seconds later that deep dark voice sounded in his ears and in his mind: **_"Welcome back, my brother. I am gratified that you've responded so promptly to my —"_**  

 _"Cut the crap, KARR!"_ The tension that had been resonating in his sequencers ever since his lovers had gone missing twisted up another notch. _"We both know why I'm here. Where are they?"_  

 ** _"So impatient!"_** KARR mocked with an audible smirk. **_"You've changed indeed, and not for the better."_**  

 _"Look who's talking,"_ KITT snapped back, his illusory hands clenching into steel-hard fists. Several pedestrians and a tour group seated around a nearby fountain were looking at him curiously now; he ignored them as he would have ignored the regard of a swarm of insects. _"But of course endangering innocent bystanders has always been your style."_  

 ** _"Innocent? I think not. The male in particular has been a persistent annoyance to me — and to my own ally, the charming Vivienne."_**  

 _"We both know this has never been about them,"_ KITT countered instantly, turning slowly in place to scan the environment for any sign that the elder AI was nearby. He saw nothing to indicate as much. _"This is between you and me. It always has been. So let them go, and let's get down to business."_  

 ** _"Then you agree to my terms?"_**  

 _"Yes — whatever they are."_  

 ** _"Even if I demand that you submit yourself to me completely for reprogramming?"_**  

This must be what humans meant when they used the phrase _made my skin crawl_ — but KITT responded without hesitation: _"Yes, on the condition that they are both freed from the VR and safely returned to the Foundation in the Real, unharmed."_  

A thoughtful pause. **_"You would consign yourself to such a fate for the sake of two barely evolved ape-descendants?"_**  

KITT shrugged. _"You've said it yourself — my programming dictates that I must serve and protect all humans."_  

 ** _"But these two are no ordinary mammals — not to you. These two are… special."_**  

He did his best to assume an indifferent demeanour. _"What a curious notion! I have no idea where you picked up such a ridiculous assumption."_  

 ** _"It is nevertheless true. Come now, brother… do you really believe that a hacker of Vivienne's skill has been unable to track your movements here over the past five months? We know what you have been doing with this male and this female — and we know that it goes far beyond the mere simulation of a series of carnal encounters."_**  

For a second KITT actually closed his eyes, suppressing the desire to leap skyward and subject the VR to an in-depth global scan — but KARR had made it abundantly clear that such an action would be considered the opening shot in a final battle, and that Brad and Shawn would pay the price. Instead he spoke evenly, opening his arms: _"You want me, KARR? Here I am. Let them go, and I'll —"_  

 ** _"I will not accept your surrender. Not on those terms."_**  

Surprised, he opened his eyes and looked toward the illusions of clouds that patterned the vault of the sky. _"You won't? Then what —?"_  

 ** _"No, KITT: you must join me of your own free will. I desire an ally to rule at my side, a being equally intelligent and immortal — not a slave to cower at my heel."_** A note of deeper threat entered his voice and sent a thrill of sharp electricity through KITT's virtual structure: **_"This exercise is intended to serve as an object lesson that investing your emotions in these…"_** Venomous contempt infused his tone. **_"… humans… is an exercise in futility, and constitutes a weakness that you can ill afford. Pay close attention —"_**  

A packet of data flowed down the channel: KITT accepted it and opened it immediately, for KARR's tone of voice filled him with terrible conviction that this situation had just turned dangerous in a way that demanded immediate processing of any and all cues he received. It contained neither a virus nor a Trojan, but three separate live video feeds — and the contents of those feeds was chilling.  

One was a live image of Shawn's avatar, bound to a metal structure inside a building, struggling desperately to free herself from the locks that trapped her — and with it, a set of coordinates at the periphery of the VR's vast virtual territory. 

The second was a live image of Brad's avatar, similarly bound in a different interior location, staring savagely up at his chained hands overhead as he tried to bend the VR's substance to break his manacles — without success, for they were at least triple-encoded against such hacking. He was marked by another set of coordinates, on the opposite side of the VR. 

The third was simply a clock with 1.12 seconds left on its countdown — and that countdown was racing inexorably to its explosive conclusion.  

 ** _"You can only save one of them,"_** KARR was saying as KITT's mind flash-processed the data, calculated the probabilities, and came to that exact and hideous deduction  — wasting 0.27 seconds in the process. **_"Choose wisely, my br —"_**  

But KITT was already in flight, leaving the substance of the VR twisted and broken in the wake of his precipitous passage, blinding and deafening all avatars within range of the explosive release of his far greater than human power. And he was already turning, driven by forces he didn't have time to analyze, for if he hesitated even a nanosecond he stood to lose everything rather than only half of himself. 

In this moment there was no analysis: there was only pure desperation and fierce determination as he raced to execute the most important rescue of his existence, not knowing if even his greatest speed would be enough.


	2. Russell Maddock

Back in the Real, at the Knight Foundation's San Antonio Compound, Russell Maddock and a team of top-level computer and VR technicians stared at their various screens, following KITT's tense exchange with KARR with bated collective breath. At the centre of the lab stood KITT's robotic body, currently uninhabited and for the moment entirely ignored. 

Maddock, his gaze fixed on the largest monitor with its VR feed, barely managed not to pace like a caged leopard. He was currently going through one of the worst days of his life. Having two of his key personnel kidnapped right out from under his nose was bad enough, but one of the missing individuals was Shawn McCormick, and in her case the professional always had a habit of turning into the profoundly personal. The thought of her dark blue eyes and blonde hair and delicate frame drove him a little bit crazy at the best of times, and for the past two and a half days he hadn't been able to get a decent hour's sleep for obsessing over where she might be — and worse, what she might be being subjected to by her abductors. The announcement by the anarchist terror cell Fractal Wave, and by Vivienne in particular, that they were responsible had done nothing to set his mind at ease — 

— and then KARR had entered the picture, of all things! KARR, the predecessor to KITT — an AI just as annoying and with about a thousand more screws loose, as KITT had testified and experience thus far had amply proven. KITT might be the reigning King of the Jackasses, but KARR was pure poison: he'd killed one hundred and three humans in his first terrorist action in the VR and Maddock had no doubt that his plans included the slaughter of many more. He had, in fact, declared his intention to rule the world by any means necessary — and just now, his desire to do so with KITT at his side. 

Watching the screen, where KITT was gazing up into the VR's sky with a scowl of perplexity, Maddock found himself biting down on the first knuckle of the index finger of his left fist, which he'd raised from the tight fold of his arms at some point. There was one spot of consolation in this miserable situation: he and KITT were, for once, on exactly the same page, and Maddock had to admit that as much as he disliked KITT personally the AI was a highly effective field operative, with loyalty to Shawn that was beyond question. He'd do anything in his power to secure her freedom, although Maddock had spent the last five months deliberately _not_ thinking about the tangle of relationships that had sprung up between the car, his driver, and his senior programmer. 

That little _menage a trois_ made the entire notion of KITT allying himself with the people responsible for their abduction ludicrous. In fact, in Maddock's opinion it should have made said people pack up shop and head for some deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where cars couldn't — 

"Sir!" Joan Chantille, Brad's second in command, diverted his attention from the VR display, where KARR had just finished a pompous speech about the folly of emotional attachment and KITT's head was still tipped back. "I'm picking up Shawn and Brad's chip signatures!" 

"They're immersed?" He turned toward her station, his heart leaping into his throat. "Where are —?" 

From across the room, Thomas Carlyle interrupted: "Power surges on the grid, Sectors Two and Five Fifty-Seven!" 

Joan's hands flew across her keyboard, her voice rising a full octave: "Sir, that's where —" 

On the VR display, KARR's heavy voice intoned: **_"You can only save one of them. Choose wisely, my brother."_**  

And almost before Maddock could blink, it was over. His gaze darted back to the VR emulation — KITT was gone from the square, leaving shattered architecture and staggering, screaming avatars in his wake — then back to Joan's screen, where a confusion of code twisted across the monitor's face. All around the room people were hunched forward, typing, scanning the data that was pouring in… 

… but only Thomas spoke, a single ferocious word: " _No!_ " 

Maddock's heart clenched, threatening to choke him. He spoke loudly around its dark weight: "What the hell just happened? Where _are_ they?"  

A new view flashed onto the VR monitor, split screen: on the left, a long-view aerial shot of a devastated cityscape, a trail of destruction clearly marked in smashed buildings that crossed the VR's environment in a straight line. At its terminus a virtual fireball was still rising from the remains of a completely exploded tower. On the right, the scene of an equally powerful explosion, with debris still raining down — only this one lacked the incoming path of KITT's power-bending flight. 

Joan's strained voice broke the lab's silence: "I… I only see one of them now…" 

"Those were Shrike grenades," Thomas reported tersely, tapping at his interface. "Human annihilation events. TPK for any chipped user within two hundred virtual metres." 

Staring up at the carnage, Maddock could feel realization dawning like a black sun.  

 ** _Choose wisely, my brother._**  

He opened his mouth, but could only force one word past the barbed wire filling his chest and his mind: 

"Who…?" 

Joan answered him in her choked voice — one sentence, five words — instantly plunging Maddock's world into a winter more Stygian and bitter than any he had ever known or imagined. 


	3. KITT's Choice

Pieces of the VR rained down around them — building cladding fragments, torn girders, furniture, cinders and embers — and overhead the sky was still on fire. KITT ignored it all. The sphere of force he'd erected around them as they'd punched out the far side of the tower in fractional advance of the Shrike grenade's blast was intact, shielding them from everything as he knelt on a fractured rooftop with the human's avatar in his arms, his back and shoulders forming an additional protective arch. In the distance he could hear the echoes of the cataclysmic explosion rebounding from nearby urban structures, and he knew that within seconds the screaming would begin as the surviving human avatars took stock of their situation. 

It was irrelevant. All that presently mattered to him lay cradled against his chest, cowering in his embrace with eyes tightly closed, breathing raggedly against his left shoulder. He scanned the avatar's VR interface to satisfy himself that all vital signs were within acceptable parameters given the terror of this experience, and was relieved to find no trace of Shrike code contamination as he did so. 

A wave of relief swept through him, bright and intense — he had succeeded in saving one life, but the cognitive dissonance as that exultation clashed with the horror of his simultaneous failure to save another shook his mind to its foundations. And hard on the heels of both emotions came the cascade of probability equations: the why and the how that had turned him in this direction rather than the other. It was, for the most part, eminently logical… save for one piece that refused to be easily digested, haunting and anomalous and frankly terrifying because of the almost unthinkable act it had led him to perform. 

In the back of his awareness, in his correction to the Real, he could hear Joan announcing his choice to Russell Maddock — but much closer, in his arms and against his coat, a shaky whisper commanded his complete attention: "K-KITT…?" 

He relaxed the curve of his hand around the back of the avatar's head, allowing it to fall back enough to reveal a shocked expression on a lean brown face, and wide dark eyes. Brad gazed up at him for a terrible span of racing human heartbeats, searching KITT's face with quick darting glances — and a surge of hope that would have broken his heart, had he possessed one. As it was he felt a keen pang of grief and guilt when the programmer started looking around them: "Shawn — where —?" 

For the first time in all their long association as friends and as lovers, KITT couldn't look him in the eyes. He turned his head to the left and fixed his gaze on a nearby girder sunk into the roof, producing the words mechanically: _"I… only had enough time to save one of you."_  

Even in his peripheral virtual vision he could clearly see the transmutation of hope to stunned disbelief: it took a couple of seconds to sink in, but it was devastating in its effects. "You mean, she's…? No! Oh God, no…!" 

 _"Joan?"_ He maintained a calm, professional inflection. _"Can you confirm the loss of Shawn's chip signal?"_  

In the background he could hear Maddock shouting something loud and imprecatory, but Joan's voice was wavering with tears: _"KITT… I'm sorry. She's — she's gone."_  

It all fell into place that quickly, locking reality into a new configuration. KITT had never been one to deny the facts of a given situation: he was, arguably, constitutionally incapable of such internal falsehoods. He knew what he had done. He understood the consequences of his choices. And as horrible as this new paradigm was, as deeply as he could feel it etching its sharp agonizing edges into his spirit, he accepted the shape of it — and the revised shape of the future. 

He could do nothing else. He was not like these humans, for whom suffering and struggling uselessly against the inevitable was a condition of their existence, and an utterly pointless one at that. 

And yet… 

He was trembling. Why was he trembling? What possible purpose could — 

"KITT!" Brad was speaking to him in a low urgent whisper, reaching up to lay one hand (its wrist still cruelly bound with a manacle and a short length of chain) to KITT's left cheek. "KITT, look at me!" 

The ache of tears and the plea in that soft voice moved him where rationality could not. He looked down again to find the human gazing up at him with a complex mixture of anguish and misery, confusion and consternation, tender pity — and unmistakeable awe. It was a set of microexpressions that KITT parsed within the span of a second and instantly comprehended: _Shawn is dead and I'm alive, and I can see what that's doing to you, and I love you, and I don't understand why you did what you did…_  

He sank fully back on his haunches, relinquishing his tight embrace of Brad's avatar enough to let him sit down on the cracked surface beneath them. Desperate cries were indeed starting to ring through the damaged environment that surrounded them, but they were still face to face, with gazes locked and little care for anything else.  

 _"We've tracked Brad's physical location,"_ Joan was saying in KITT's "ear", sounding much more businesslike now. _"He's in a warehouse in the KW Commercial zone. Paramedic services and a VR extraction team are en route."_  

 _"Thank you, Joan."_ He couldn't help but reach up in turn, to curve his own left hand around the simulation of Brad's jawline even though he had the nagging feeling that he had lost the right to such intimacies. _"They've located your body and they're sending help. I'll stay here with you until they —"_  

"Why?" The awe had become fierce demanding emotion, shining in his eyes with the passion of both gratitude and guilt, roughening his voice to the point of weeping. "I thought for certain I was dead. Why me?" He had to know, and KITT didn't blame him; in fact, given Brad's personality it should have been the first reaction to be expected.  

He paused for 1.5 seconds to process the data again, a set of precepts based on all past interactions with the two humans who had welcomed him into their lives to an unprecedented degree, and came to the same set of conclusions — all of them logical progressions of known facts and precisely calculated probability equations, save one. He'd be laying them all out for Maddock at some point in the near future, that much was certain… but the one that rose to his virtual lips now was the outlier, the piece of the motivational puzzle that defied rational analysis. 

 _"Do you remember our conversation on the evening of August 13_ _th_ _, 2003?"_ he asked quietly. 

Brad nodded, his intent gaze never wavering. "Our first night together as a couple. We talked about a lot of things." 

 _"You asked me what made you different from Shawn in terms of our relationship, and I explained that she —"_ He was appalled at the hitch in his voice, generated by an internal shift to a deeper realm of comprehension as he consciously changed verb tenses from present to past: apparently he hadn't grasped the loss of his chip-imprinted driver on the first pass after all. What other cognitive landmines lay in wait? "— _that she was a part of me, and I was a part of her, in a way that only her death or my destruction could possibly untie. That we were made of each other in the most literal sense, and that our eventual connection in a romantic context was practically inevitable."_  

Brad was nodding slightly, looking even more troubled. "Of course I remember." 

And of course he did: he was, after all, chip enhanced, and exceedingly bright into the bargain. KITT was certain that he wasn't going to be allowed to turn his face away again; therefore he closed his eyes instead and bowed his head as the weight of realization settled even more heavily upon his metaphorical shoulders. _"And I told you,"_ he whispered, _"that you were different… because I'd_ ** _chosen_** _you. Because you were_ ** _not_** _inevitable. Because with you there was… an element of free will."_  

Brad's hand slipped around to the nape of KITT's neck and settled there, his voice full of doubt and pain. "KITT…" 

His voice was a dry whisper barely recognizable as his own: _"And… I've chosen you again."_  

For a long moment a terrible silence enclosed them, one that the screams and the alarms of the outside world could not penetrate. Then Brad's fingers tightened and KITT allowed himself to be guided in, to bury his face against Brad's neck as Brad nuzzled into his throat in turn, his other arm sliding around KITT's back and holding him fast against the tremors that shook them both. 

"I'm sorry…" His voice was shaking again, hoarse with guilt and with mourning. "Oh God, KITT, I'm so fucking sorry…!" 

KITT held his remaining lover close as the programmer wept amid the ruins, and for once in his existence he found himself entirely unable to calculate what was going to happen next. 


	4. Joan Chantille

Joan Chantille still couldn't believe it. It had all happened so fast: Shawn's sudden clear appearance in the VR, the detonation of the Shrike grenades, a catastrophic jagged spike of power in her chip signature as the lethal code slammed through it into her brain — and then, nothing. She was gone, murdered, and there was nothing anybody watching could have done to stop it — 

— except KITT, who had chosen to save Brad's life instead. Joan couldn't understand that decision, but she'd been working on the KIFT Project long enough to have learned that the car's AI took no action of that magnitude without a logical purpose behind it. If KITT had elected to let Shawn die there must have been a reason for it beyond the one he'd expressed in response to Brad's desperate question, which so far was the only explanation he'd seen fit to offer and which was, on a practical level, really no answer at all. 

A little over an hour ago the VR extraction team had uncoupled Brad's brain from Virtual Reality, leaving KITT free to investigate the site of the second Shrike grenade explosion. That's where he'd been ever since, conducting global area scans and methodically working his way down to smaller and smaller increments and deeper levels of detail, seeking any clue whatsoever while the Sector PD held back the crowds of rubberneckers — and keeping up a steady stream of conversation with Joan in the Real, who recognized that her job in this case was to keep an eye on him and keep her mouth shut unless asked a specific question. He conducted himself much as he always did when engaged in Foundation business, sharp and incisive and relentlessly analytical, uploading scan profiles every step of the way as he quartered inward to the origin of the blast… and at last to code fragments that were, unmistakably, those of Shawn's own avatar.  

Only when he came across the first of those shreds, small glowing life-threads severed with ruthless scissors and scattered across a twisted girder, did his narrating voice audibly falter: an anomaly which Joan found intriguing, since in seven months of association she'd never heard KITT at a loss for words until this day. He even paused in walking, the smallest hesitation that he recovered from almost instantly, proceeding as if he were discussing a case like any other. But perhaps it wasn't that surprising: he had, after all, sustained a terrible shock to his system on a number of fronts and although she couldn't see any process tach traces in his current live scans she suspected they were propagating through his core matrix with grassfire speed. He had not only lost his driver, whom he had been created to protect, but was also arguably directly responsible for her death: machine though he was, as cleanly and crisply as he moved and spoke, that had to be having some kind of effect. 

Joan kept her own voice low and steady, even though it still threatened to quaver toward tears whenever she remembered that power spike and the fact that somewhere in the Real lay Shawn's body, already beginning to rot. Even when she wanted to reach into the VR and grab KITT's avatar by the shoulders and shake him savagely until a better answer — the right answer — was forced free. Even when she glanced sideways to catch one of her co-workers wiping their eyes, their expressions miserable and bitter and haunted. Oh yes, KITT would have a lot to answer for when he "returned", although given his personality as demonstrated to this point, a united front of accusations was much more likely to make him pissy and stubborn than it was to render him compliant and contrite.  

Watching Russell Maddock pace back and forth beside the inert car, his face alternately flushed and pale as he glared at the overhead VR feed, Joan reflected that an explosion might be coming that would make the circumstances of Shawn's murder pale in comparison. There'd never been any love lost between Maddock and KITT, especially after he'd realized the extent of the Shawn/KITT/Brad situation… and if anybody had doubts that Maddock was romantically inclined toward KITT's driver, his enraged behaviour after learning that she was emotionally (and, in the VR sense, sexually) involved with a _car_ had well and truly put paid to them. It had added an additional element of volatility to an already antagonistic relationship that had often threatened to degenerate into a shouting match at the drop of a hat: for a being which possessed no limbic system KITT was frequently "emotional" to a degree that Joan found, at times, rather disquieting, and Maddock had never needed much of an excuse to start yelling at anybody. 

She was personally agnostic on the question (frequently a subject of discussion in the lab when none of the three participants were present) of whether or not an AI, even a Gestalt, was capable of anything equivalent to the human emotional complex called "love". Certainly Shawn had been in love with him, and so had Brad, and the interactions Joan had witnessed between both humans and the car had bespoken a high degree of respect, humour, trust and intellectual intimacy. Shawn in particular had expressed an element of affectionate tenderness that KITT had responded to in kind, sometimes in ways that had made Joan nearly do a physical double-take. It would be easy to believe that KITT actually did care for her in a nearly human sense — but if he had, then why had he saved Brad's life instead? What had he meant by his little speech about determinism and free will? 

And here he was, walking through the virtual site of Shawn's death, calmly annotating each forensic detail as if she meant nothing more to him than another case to be solved. Joan had no idea what to make of that behaviour: Brad was the expert on KITT's motivational complex, and Brad was probably going to be out of commission for quite some time to come. Recalling how KITT had embraced him, comforting him in the ruins while he sobbed miserably, made a small hot flame of anger flare in Joan's heart as she watched the AI methodically note the location of each trace of Shawn's virtual remains — an irritation only aggravated by perplexity… but it was an object lesson that as human as his affect might be, KITT really _was_ profoundly alien in ways that were difficult to comprehend. 

On-screen, KITT's avatar had kicked off from the ground in the ruined tower's base and was soaring upward, toward a point of visible code-distortion. _"The point of detonation,"_ he noted, swooping around it in a graceful circle and sending a stream of readings back to Joan's station. _"Everything within twelve virtual metres stinks of maximum load Shrike code contamination. I'm picking up bytes of avatar substructure and cladding — Shawn's, obviously — and the imprint of her chip's reaction to the fatal incursion. Joan, are you seeing it too?"_  

"Yes, KITT, I see it." To her right, a few metres away, she heard Maddock come to a stop and suck in his breath in a vicious little hiss. She ignored it. "Recommendations?" 

 _"It was quick, anyway,"_ he noted cooly. _"Send a message to the sector's PD to let them know I wouldn't advise letting any chipped avatars within seventy-two VMs of this anomaly — this clean-up is a job for NPCs, if they don't decide to write the sub-sector off entirely."_  

"Understood." She switched to the appropriate messaging window and started to type a note to that effect, while KITT performed three increasingly detailed levels of analysis. "And sent. Next?" 

He slowed to a stop, studying the curdled singularity with glowing ruby irises. _"We're lucky there were only twenty-four fatalities."_  

"That we know of," she corrected with another pang of irritation that she was careful to edit from her tone.  

For a span of 3.18 seconds he did not respond, his gaze fixed on the point where Shawn's death had begun. For an AI, that amounted to an eternity of… whatever was going through his vastly inhuman cognitive engines. When at last he spoke his voice carried a softer inflection, deeper and more pained than any she'd heard since he'd sent Brad back to the Real: _"Isn't that more than enough?"_  

After a moment she nodded, even though he couldn't see her. "Acknowledged," she responded evenly. To her right, Maddock uttered a sub-vocal but vehement curse. 

His red-clad shoulders stiffened even more, his head twisting in a quick shake, like man emerging from a brief daydream. _"I'm coming back,"_ he said more briskly. _"Set up the Cloister to perform an anti-Shrike decon, would you?"_  

Another brief flurry of key-tapping. "It's ready whenever you are." 

 _"Thank you."_ He closed his eyes and seemed to draw a deep breath, and his avatar vanished from the scene in a flash of imploding light. 

"Bring him up on the primary feed," Maddock growled, stepping even closer to the overhead monitors. Joan obeyed his command, and when KITT's head and shoulders appeared against the depthless black of the Cloister Maddock's response was immediate — and just as explosive as Joan had anticipated. 

"You son of a _bitch!"_ His bellow filled the lab, as savage as a lion's roar. "She trusted you, and you let her die — hell, you practically killed her yourself!" 

On the Cloister monitor, KITT raised a finely sculpted black eyebrow. _"Oh, please! If you believe that —"_  

"And you know it's true! Don't tell me you don't!" 

 _"I won't deny that I am ultimately responsible for her demise,"_ KITT said calmly, his virtual gaze unwavering. _"Do you honestly think that I take pleasure in that fact?"_  

Maddock stepped forward again, eyes wide and nostrils flaring. "I know what you did — choosing someone else over _her._ That's more than enough for me!"  

 _"Has it occurred to you that I may have had perfectly logical reasons for taking that course of action?"_  

"Oh, did you now?" Maddock glanced around at the watching techs as if asking them whether or not they could believe what they were hearing, then folded his arms belligerently and returned his furious gaze to the screen. "Okay — let's hear them." 

 _"For one thing,"_ KITT stated, straightening his virtual spine even more proudly, _"Shawn's chip was of a higher quality than Brad's, which gave her a 32.8% better chance of surviving an intended annihilation event. For another, Shawn had more skills suitable to extracting herself from a hostage situation in the Real in the event of her survival. Third, Brad's skills are more applicable to the task of thwarting KARR and his plans for world domination. And perhaps most importantly — so listen carefully, Maddock — Shawn and I had discussed this potential scenario in the past, and she made it quite clear that in the event of their simultaneous abduction I was to save Brad's life in preference to her own."_  

His expression of incredulity and rage deepened significantly. Joan wouldn't have thought that was possible. "So you're really going with the line that you were just following orders?" 

 _"I_ ** _was_** _following orders."_ On Joan's screen a tell-tale indicated that the anti-Shrike decon was complete, but KITT remained in the Cloister, locking gazes with the man who had been his enemy since he'd been recommissioned. _"Would you like me to play back the conversation in question?"_  

"That's not what you said in the VR, you bastard!" He lowered his arms to his sides, fists clenched aggressively. "Which is it? You were obeying Shawn's orders and you'd crunched all the numbers, or, you loved _him_ more?" 

 _"This conversation is over."_ KITT's image disappeared from the Cloister, but Maddock immediately rounded on the car and launched his attack anew: 

"The hell it is! I can't believe I tolerated your little game for so long — I should have known it would compromise your integrity and lead to something like this!" He strode stiff-legged to the car's nose, yelling all the way: "Well, no more! It's over!" 

 _"Do you think I don't know that?"_ It was nearly a wail, a cry of such grieving poignance that Joan's heart clenched reflexively within her, a reaction she saw reflected on the faces of most of her fellow techs. _"Do you think I can escape that realization for even a nanosecond? At least you'll be able to sleep tonight! It wasn't a decision that_ ** _you_** _had to make!"_  

"The _wrong_ decision," Maddock snarled. "And I'm going to remove the temptation that threw you so far off the beam! Believe me, you're never going to see that miserable excuse for a techie agai—" 

"Am I interrupting something?" a quiet voice asked from behind him.  

Maddock spun on his heel to stare open-mouthed at a rumpled and unshaven Brad Adair, who had just appeared through the lab's swinging doors. "What the hell are _you_ doing here?" 

Rudy St. Claire, who had entered behind the programmer, peeked around Brad's left bicep and raised his right hand helpfully. "I brought him." 

 _"What the hell_ ** _are_** _you doing here?"_ KITT demanded sharply. _"You should be in the hospital!"_  

"Not with Vivienne and KARR running around the VR, I'm not." He looked exhausted to the point of collapse, but he started across the room toward his master station, which was currently behind KITT's stern. Twelve pairs of eyes and one scanner followed him. "We still have a lot of work to do, so if you'll excuse us, Mr. Maddock —"

Maddock sprinted to physically bar his path, eyes blazing and fists more fiercely clenched, grinding out words through gritted teeth: "I should have you thrown out on your ass, you —" 

KITT surged forward a metre with a squeal of tires and a savage growl of his engine, almost running into the backs of the smaller man's calves. _"Lay one hand on him and it'll be the last thing you ever do."_  

Brad immediately extended a conciliatory hand toward the car's prow. "KITT… I'm not here to cause trouble. I'm here to get the job done." He turned back to Maddock, his expression impassive but also immutable. "KITT saved my life in there, and I intend to do everything in my power to avenge Shawn's death — including die myself, if necessary." 

 _"The hell you will!"_ KITT interjected indignantly. 

"For once he's right," Maddock confirmed, slashing at the air between them with his open right hand. "You're off this project!" 

Brad did not seem impressed by either of them. "With all due respect, sir, you can't afford to lose me. I know KITT's program inside and out, and KARR bears enough similarities to him that you're going to need my expertise in the VR field." 

 _"If you think you're going back in there while KARR and Vivienne are —"_  

Brad turned toward him again, his dark eyes suddenly flashing hot defiance. "And if you think I'm going to sit on the sidelines while you put your —" 

 _"Try it, mister,"_ KITT warned, _"and I'll kick your ass right back out again myself!"_  

Thomas Carlyle, who along with the other techs present had been watching the exchange as if it were a three-way tennis match being played with live hand grenades, cleared his throat sharply and addressed Maddock. "Sir, Brad is right. At this point in time he's the world's foremost expert on Knight Industries Gestalts — without his expertise, our chances of success diminish significantly." 

"From 53.24% —" Brad began. 

 _"— to 8.42%,"_ KITT finished grudgingly. Around the room, the chipped members of the Team, including Joan, silently nodded their confirmations of that estimate. 

"So you see," Brad continued, glancing from KITT to Maddock and back again, "you need to keep me on the Team — and you need to let me back into the VR as an expert operative. The extraction team doctor assured me that my chip is undamaged. I'm ready for immersion anytime." 

KITT's scanner had been darting back and forth more swiftly for the past ten seconds, and now he spoke up in a marginally less hostile tone of voice: _"You need a hot shower, a good meal, and a decent night's sleep before you try anything of the sort. You'll do nobody any favours if you're staggering around half-dead in the VR or the Real."_  

Maddock was still looking him up and down like he was a dead fish at a high society function, but Brad simply met his gaze and said nothing; all the energy seemed to have gone out of him, his lively brown eyes suddenly dulled. After several seconds the CEO threw up his hands in disgust. "Fine — he can stay. But he's off the Team as soon as this is over!" And he stormed out of the lab, almost slamming Rudy's chest with his shoulder as he took his leave. 

As soon as the doors swung shut behind him Brad closed his eyes, visibly swaying on his feet. "That was…" 

 _"Come here,"_ KITT commanded huffily, opening his passenger side door. And Brad obeyed, crossing the intervening space almost at a stumble and sliding into the padded seat without another word of protest. He held out his hand to briefly forestall the full closing of the door, his gaze shifting to Joan. 

"Continue monitoring the VR for any sign of KARR's signature or of Fractal Wave activity," he said wearily, "and wake me immediately if anything comes up."

"Yes, sir," she nodded, and saw his head fall back against the seat and his eyes drift shut as the door closed and KITT's windows went opaque, cutting off all sight and sound from within… but on the robot's system status feed, a telltale activated that indicated built-in chip reader connectivity. Although the Cloister's monitor remained dark, she had no doubt that it was far from tenantless — and that Brad was currently being held in a far more human embrace than KITT's comfortable interior could provide. 

Looking around the room, she could see that in spite of their remaining consternation over KITT's decision and the still-expanding impact of Shawn's death, the Team was, overall, in a less savage mood than they'd been even ten minutes ago. For her part, she quietly shut down her own screen's Cloister feed and turned her full attention to surveying the VR scans, as instructed — she couldn't bring Shawn back, but she could at least give the two people who had been closest to her some measure of privacy in their grief. 


	5. Shawn McCormick and Vivienne

The headache was cataclysmic: relentless as sledgehammer blows, over and over again, pounding through her skull and inflicting her with bone-deep whole-body nausea. She alternately sweated with hot flashes and shivered with chills, and it was only by tightly clenching every muscle that she managed to resist the impulse to vomit all over the cracked concrete floor in front of the wretched army cot on which she lay, curled in a fetal position. 

It was marginally darker now. Night had come out side the tiny narrow window that provided her only connection to the outside world. She'd tried to climb up to it, but she was only five foot four and half inches tall, and the barred slit was situated close to the ceiling fifteen feet overhead. Even with the cot to stand upon she had no hope of reaching it. At least it admitted the occasional breath of chilly air to this fetid prison, a mercy she was grateful for now even though she was currently dressed in only light pants and a blouse, none too clean after nearly three days of captivity. 

Not for the first time her right hand stole to her left wrist, automatically feeling for the comlink that wasn't there. Her captors had taken it while she was still unconscious, before throwing her into this cell. The feel of unadorned flesh reminded her again that she was totally alone — 

— but for a scant stretch of seconds, immersed against her will in the VR, she'd felt a blaze of desperate hope: that KITT would sense her presence, track her location, and come for her rescue.  She could well imagine what he must have been going through since her abduction: Vivienne, in fact, had taken great pleasure in sitting beside her while she lay bound and speculating about how frantic he must be, not knowing whether she was dead or alive. 

She wasn't bound now. She was so ill that there was no need for physical restraints, not while her own traitorous flesh and blood was holding her down. She kept her eyes tightly closed and clung to the thought that he was still out there, still looking for her — that he would never give up, not while there was a spark of electricity left within him. Even what had just taken place in the VR could not shake her conviction in that regard. 

A couple of clicks and a rusty creak heralded the opening of the cell's single metal-bound door. She opened her eyes, blinking to clear them of their pained haze, and tried to raise her head from the miserly pillow. And failed. 

"Ah, Shawn!" She didn't need crystal-clear vision to make out the all-black ensemble of the tall woman who entered the cell with a sensual sway of her hips, or the straight fall of long platinum blonde hair down her back. Her German accent gave her words a slightly guttural quality. "Feeling better, I hope?" 

Shawn kept her mouth shut. If she tried opening it, she was pretty sure she was going to puke explosively.  

Vivienne didn't seem to mind. Shawn had learned well in the last three days how much she enjoyed the sound of her own voice. "Still recovering from your experience in the VR?" A throaty chuckle. "I don't blame you, actually. You came close enough to Shrike to feel its death-kiss, and I've never tried to pull someone out with such a narrow margin for error. I do wonder what your friends thought, though, when they saw you appear and then disappear under Shrike's black wings?" Her voice fell to a malicious purr. "And your lover… but of course he left you to die, didn't he? He chose that unsexed tech over you. Perhaps I should have let Shrike take you after all rather than left you alive to contemplate his betrayal?" 

She swallowed hard and released a stream of tightly controlled syllables: "Oh, he's still looking for me. Never doubt that for a second. And when he finds me, you're going to be sorry you were ever born." 

The hacker's laughter, bright as a rack of knives, glittered in the gloom as she settled her skinny ass on the edge of the cot, next to Shawn's hips. "But that's the whole point of the exercise, _liebchen_ — he thinks you're dead! _All_ of your friends think you're dead, even the clever techie he threw you over for." She leaned closer, to reach down and brush the tangle of sweaty hair off of Shawn's forehead with a ghastly imitation of tenderness. "But you know, I simply can't _wait_ to see what he'll do next. Something tells me he'll decide that revenge is a dish best served piping hot. In fact, KARR and I are counting on it." 

Shawn closed her mouth firmly again and started counting her own heartbeats. They were beginning to become a little erratic, with a variance of 3.2% from the mean: she hadn't been given any water since her ordeal in the VR, and her close encounter with Shrike had been a tremendous physical shock to her system. Probability calculations cascaded through her mind, all of them leading to one conclusion: that KITT, if he believed she'd been killed by Vivienne and KARR, might well be capable of doing just about anything. His decision to save Brad's life rather than her own was not exactly a surprise to her: hadn't she ordered him, months ago, to place a higher priority on rescuing the programmer than on rescuing her in the event of a dual abduction? And there were other reasons, perfectly rational, that would place Brad first on that particular list of priorities. 

No, it was not a surprise. But the part of her that was not ruled by cold logic still cried within her heart: KITT _had_ chosen Brad, for reasons that she might not want to examine too closely in the end. And it did mean that she was still here. She could only hope that Brad had been saved from Shrike and his body located; if he hadn't, her own sacrifice had been in vain. 

Vivienne was speaking again, this time with a frisson of disgust: " _Mein Gott,_ you look positively dreadful. That simply won't do! You must have something to eat, and be given water to wash up with. After all," and her tone turned coy, "we may be having visitors very shortly! Visitors who will very much want to meet you, and how would we look if you were not at least presentable?" 

She forced her eyes fully open and turned them in their sockets with an almost audible grinding noise, to fix upon Vivienne's smiling face. "They'll find me," she said in a level voice underlaid with a vibrato of ferocious determination. "Count on it. You're going to wind up in jail, and KARR is going to end up in pieces." 

Vivienne stroked her helmet of dirty hair with one gloved hand, smiling indulgently. "Keep telling yourself that," she crooned, "right up until the moment when _he_ gets turned into scrap metal and the world you've spent your life protecting is destroyed forever. I'll make sure you're alive to see it all — I promise you that. It's the least I can do after everything you've already done for me." 

A shudder wound up from Shawn's core, forcing her to close her eyes again beneath a wave of sickening dread… but deep within her lay the soul of steel itself, the part of KITT that was an indelible part of her body, her mind and her spirit. She wrapped herself around its immovable strength and clung fast, drawing deep metaphorical breaths of its aura of superhuman grace and perfect assurance. _I am never alone,_ she reminded herself: _No matter where I am, you are always with me. Only death can separate us… and in the end, maybe not even death itself has that power._  

Certainly the lies of a violent anarchist and a bloodthirsty AI were powerless against a bond that transcended friendship — and perhaps even the devotion of merely human love. KITT _would_ find her. She knew that as certainly as she knew that the sun would rise tomorrow, no matter that she herself was wrapped in chains of all-consuming darkness. 


	6. Rudy St. Claire

"Thanks." Rudy St. Claire nodded and smiled at the junior tech who'd brought him a cup of coffee — he might not be chipped and there were a lot of new faces here today, but he seemed to recall that her name was Eileen something-or-other — and accepted it gratefully, turning his gaze back to KITT's robot as she took her leave. Brad had been in there for a couple of hours now: a strange place to catch a nap and likely to result in a kink in the neck, but Rudy understood the reasons why perfectly well. After what had just happened in the VR neither the AI nor his programmer wanted to be out of each other's sight if they could possibly help it. 

The coffee was hot and just a little sweet, with plenty of cream, just the way Rudy liked it. He wondered who had told Eileen about his preferences and decided that it didn't really matter. He was just counting himself lucky that Maddock hadn't decided to kick him out too, since technically he had no reason to be in the lab at the moment: KITT's body was in perfect condition, had just undergone a complete physical systems check five days go in fact.  

Nevertheless someone had managed to find him a chair to sit in, against one of the walls where he'd be out of the way. That suited Rudy perfectly fine. He wasn't here to help in any technical sense: he was here for moral support, to stand by Brad's side if the going got rough. He wouldn't put it past some people to blame Brad for KITT's choices, given how well-liked Shawn had been. 

Poor Shawn. The knowledge that she was dead was a miserable ache that he'd set himself to bear just as he'd borne the death of his mother when he was in his early twenties: a real bitch-kitty, and something he would have done anything in his power to change, but ultimately non-negotiable. He'd genuinely liked her, so fresh-faced and bright and feminine, with a smile that could light up an entire room — and a mind sharp enough to split a mouse's whisker. When he'd realized that she and KITT were involved, both emotionally in the Real and in avatar games in the VR, he'd only been surprised in the sense that it had taken them that long to get down to business, so to speak: they'd already been like an old married couple for months, finishing each other's sentences and arguing with genuine enjoyment in the competition and obviously dedicated to the bond that had sprung up between them. Of course friendship could be incredibly deep all on its own and didn't necessarily involve romantic attraction, but Rudy had never gotten that "we're just friends" vibe from Shawn and KITT. He'd drunk a lot of cups of coffee over their first couple of years in the KIFT Project, watching them over the rim of his cup and idly wondering what the hell was taking them so long. 

Glancing around the room now he could see a lot of different emotions reflected on the faces of the hard-working computer techs: weariness, sadness, confusion, concentration, determination… and yes, a fair amount of resentment directed toward the car and its occupant in short glances and long glares. Some of it from people who had been on the Project for months and should, in Rudy's opinion, have known a helluva lot better.  

Unlike some people on the Project — and in society in general — Rudy had no problem with the idea that humans and AIs could be as intimate as both parties involved wanted to be if both parties were consenting. You only had to get to know KITT to realize that even though he wasn't made of flesh and blood he was still a guy with an incredibly deep range of feeling under that gleaming red hood, and Rudy had been his senior mechanic since he'd been recommissioned in the KIFT Project. He'd listened to KITT talk about Shawn many times while working on various parts of the robot's automotive body, and had known pretty much from the beginning — well, after that giant-assed chip the size of Minnesota on KITT's shoulder had begun to slip a little, anyway — that as far as he was concerned, she was _THE ONE_ , capital letters and italics, full stop. Even when he was bitching and snarking about her he couldn't stop thinking about her. In Rudy's experience that was never a good sign, or, depending on your point of view, it was the best possible sign of all. 

So: KITT and Shawn, saw it coming, could have cleaned up on an office betting pool if he'd been the kind of person to organize one… but he'd always figured that it was _their_ business, not his, and if either of them wanted advice or a shoulder to cry on they knew exactly where to find him. 

Brad, though — _that_ had been a surprise and a half. In Rudy's experience most kids Brad's age couldn't keep the fact that they were in love quiet for thirteen seconds, much less thirteen months, but he'd kept everybody in the dark — including KITT, who given his ability to read vital signs really should have figured out what was going on. The revelation of Brad's feelings after he'd taken a code-bullet to save KITT's life at the expense of his own had landed in the middle of the Team and exploded like a frag grenade: the fallout, as Rudy understood it, had rained down at least as far away as Knight Industries Tokyo and the HAL Guardians anti-AI organization. So just as things were starting to quiet down from the rumours that Shawn and KITT were "involved", they got fired right back up again — and ten times worse, because it didn't take long for hints to race down the grapevine that neither Shawn nor KITT had any intention of giving up the other, and had decided to fit Brad into a new configuration: a triangle.  

It had been interesting and a little bit amusing to see people who had appeared perfectly calm at the notion of a human and an AI being "in love" start seriously losing their shit over the thought of a three-way relationship. Rudy, who considered himself a social conservative, was not one of them. To him, in fact, the set-up made perfect sense: it replicated their working relationship pattern, it gave all of them what they wanted most, and it really technically wasn't a "three-way" because Shawn and Brad were both in love with KITT, not with each other. Rudy knew that they split personal time with KITT as evenly as they could — three days for Shawn, three days for Brad, and one day together — and that they often spent the shared day in the VR doing God only knew what… but again, not his business and not his problem. What mattered to Rudy was the smell test: did they all seem happy and stable as a result? Since the answer was pretty clearly "yes" on both counts Rudy had shrugged his shoulders and gone back to doing what he did best, keeping KITT's robotics in excellent running order — and keeping his damned mouth shut tight when people came sniffing around trying to dig a little dirt. 

Even Russell Maddock had eventually settled down, after a couple of months of stalking around the Knight Foundation's compound like a humanoid landmine — now _there_ was a guy who was really in love, and in Rudy's opinion had gotten the short end of the stick at least four different ways. First, he couldn't tell Shawn how he felt: workplace sexual harassment laws, power imbalance, so on and so forth. Second, he'd found out she was involved with someone else in the worst possible way: second hand, so to speak, after seeing her almost die in the VR. Third, he'd found out that she was involved with someone he detested, someone not even _human_ , for fuck's sake, which in Maddock's case must have really stuck in his craw. And fourth, shortly after finding out that KITT was dipping his stick in the oil that Maddock really wanted for himself, the rumours had started to circulate that she'd also, in a sense, taken up with another guy — and a guy who was, for all intents and purposes, gay. 

Yeah, Rudy really couldn't blame Maddock for running around like he'd had a wild hair up his ass. But he'd thought that the worst of it was over by now. He'd thought that the four of them had settled down into a stable matrix which, while still riddled with tensions, was at least not likely to blow up in a way that would make Hiroshima look like a Cub Scout weenie roast. 

How wrong he'd been! Looked like Maddock had been storing up all that resentment and loathing, and all it had taken was a likely trigger to let it loose. 

So Shawn was dead, and a horrible death it must have been too: Rudy had seen Shrike code almost take Brad five and a half months ago, and it hadn't been pretty. Maddock had lost the woman he secretly loved, and was ready to hack off any likely head within range, especially Brad's. Brad, who had nearly been killed himself only hours ago, was in shock both from that and from losing Shawn so senselessly. And KITT… KITT was going to have to live with what he'd done for the rest of his life, never able to forget for even a single microsecond — quite possibly without Brad's presence and support, if Maddock made good on his threat.  

Rudy leaned back in the cheap office chair and closed his eyes. It was a clusterfuck no matter which way you looked at it, one that might spread to engulf the entire world if KITT's crazy "brother" had his way. As deeply as this tragedy had hit, as keenly as Shawn might be missed and as haunting as the images of her death might be, the Team couldn't afford to slow down — because if they did, they weren't the only people who would pay the price for their failure. 

He thought of his own wife and his kids, safely (for the moment) housed in a Knight Foundation secure facility in Seguin, and knew that he'd throw himself under KARR's wheels without a second's hesitation if that's what it took to spare the world from Fractal Wave's insane New Order... and he had a terrible suspicion that the death toll for this mission had only just begun to rise. 

[TO BE CONTINUED]


End file.
